Lyra named this unborn child Baby Dragon, and it has stuck. She doesn’t know or care that this is the year of the Dragon; she just really likes dragons. She has also decided that we should only name it Dragon when it comes out if it’s a girl. If it’s a boy, she thinks the name should be Butterfly.

Strange, vivid dreams seem to be the standard for me lately. Apparently a lot of women experience crazy dreams when they’re pregnant. The other night I woke up right in the middle of a scary one that involved Adam driving our car far too fast on an icy road. I woke up just as the car was flipping over, heading into a bunch of trees at the side of the road. Not fun.

Last night was a bit more exciting and less disturbing. I was still very pregnant, and was a member of a secret spy organization that had been exposed. The entire group was mid-evacuation from various safe houses, and for some reason the entire city had been dropped into some kind of apocalyptic ice storm. The temperature had dropped so much that we were putting on layer upon layer of clothing with a fur-lined, hooded parka on top. I’m not quite sure how I found one that fit over my huge belly.

A group of us had climbed to the very top of a multi-storey walk-up to a balcony, where we were jumping onto a helicopter. I was very irritated that someone was holding the door open, since the cold snap had made the outside temperature -50 degrees Celsius or something ridiculous. Things were flash-freezing everywhere. They filled up the helicopter before I could get on, so I had to wait for another option to get out. A huge truck pulled up and I had to climb over the balcony and down onto the back of it, then climb down to the ground via some makeshift steps – mostly built out of crates. It felt like some sort of video game.

I climbed down and made it to a house full of other people hiding out. I think I woke up just after I’d had time to explore the house and realize that the enemy had surrounded the house and we were trying to come up with a plan for escape, or a way to hide. Everyone in the house was a woman, but I don’t know if that was going to be helpful, since I woke up before we really had to deal with it.

The dream was more exciting than it was scary, though. Not like the car accident dream from the other night, which was just terrifying.

But enough about dreams! My friend Mike took a few photos of me at 36 weeks pregnant (a week ago) and I want to share a few of them.